Digital Transformation Award 2015: Barkawi behind Audi on position 2

Quickback – The modern App for praising ‘on the go’. Clever technical support for modern HR management. Half past nine in the morning, Germany. The young colleague comes to his teamleader’s office and delivers research work on his focus topic. His research is excellent! Deeply impressed, the project manager praises his young colleague, thanks him and gives him a clap on his shoulder with a warm “Go on like that!” And forgets to forward his positive feedback to HR.

Most modern companies evaluate their employees‘ potential once a year comprehensively. There is feedback questionnaire to be filled in, project work to be evaluated, competencies to be ranked and the employee’s personality to be assessed. The big things, so to speak. The small things tend to be forgotten until the evaluation period comes.

„Positive and negative criticism often become forgotten during the daily stress and routine. This is because there is a lack of tools to document big praise with minimum effort ‘on the go’”, says Carena Barkawi, Managing Partner of the homonymous Munich management consultancy.

This is now a thing of the past. The “Quickback” app, which has been nominated for the ‘digital transformation award 2015’, makes it possible to give immediate feedback – and to document it. The management team use the app, developed by Carena Barkawi, on their mobile phones.

After opening the app, there is a drop-down menue to select the very employee, one emoticon for praise or criticism and one text field for a short comment like “Great research!” The evaluations are collected in a data base and analyzed weekly.

Positive evaluations can boost an employee’s career or get him in an excellence program which will consist of the right candidates.

The war for talent has been on for many years, and there is a heavy struggle to obtain the best candidates. Winning smart people for the own company is not enough – it is important to keep them and to develop them individually.

As the smartphone and its capacities have become an integral part of our daily life, the app “quickback” brings an innovative idea to talent development and HR management.

This was exactly the view the renowned jury oft he digital transformation award held – they nominated Barkawi in the field “Digital Corporate Culture”. Even though, Audi won in the end – with a worldwide social media platform, a kind of AUDI-LinkedIn.

The author: Carena Barkawi, Founder and CEO

For many years, Carena Barkawi has been CEO of the award winning consultancy Barkawi Management Consultants in Munich. Barkawi Management Consultants is part of the Barkawi Group, where Carena Barkawi is CEO of the Holding.